Every Day Is Mother's Day

Don't be misled by the title: Every Day Is Mother's Day isn't an Erma Bombek type look at motherhood or a feminist polemic--it's the best "ghost story" I've ever read. It's sad, funny, macabre, and disturbing. I've read only one other book (Fludd) by this author so far, but she's already near the top of my list of favorite writers--maybe she'll be on yours, too.

Hilary Mantel is one of a kind. She is inconcerned with surfaces and deals with the subconscious activity of the forces of Good and Evil, both of our own devising and of other realms of authority entirely. EVERY DAY IS MOTHER'S DAY is a story of incremental evil and madness loosed on a selectively perceiving world, the activity of the truly wicked being obscured by the preconceptions and the predilections of those who, sidelong and reluctant, observe it. One little horror engenders another, each larger than the last, until chaos is unleashed and, still, unappreciated for what it is, is embraced by those who are certain to become its next victims. This is a novel of real terror, and part of the horror is that it will make you laugh.

People who have enjoyed Mantel's more gentle, humane novels like Experiment in Love or Change Of Climate might be surprised by the black comedy of this one. But I became weirdly fascinated in the characters, the occasionally chilling plot, the astringent prose and the biting humor from the outset. Immediately after I finished this book, I plunged into its sequel, Vacant Posession. But I don't recommend reading them when you're home alone at night. Mantel's decription of madness is so convincing, I briefly feared for my own sanity for a minute or two while reading it.